Organizer Planning Meeting to Protest NATO/G8 Summit

Antiwar, student, and labor organizers from around the city of Milwaukee will be meeting on Saturday, Feb. 18, 1 pm, at The Center Street LIbrary (2727 W. Fond du Lac Ave.) for a planning meeting to found a Milwaukee Coalition to protest the NATO/G8 Summit in Chicago this May.

About NATO/G8 Summit (from http://cang8.wordpress.com/):

Next May, 2012 Chicago will host two huge, international summits as leaders of the NATO military alliance and the “G8,” a forum consisting of representatives from eight of the largest industrial economies, will gather here.

The G8 has led the charge for government give-aways to corporations, including banks, and attacks on working people’s living standards. G8 members currently include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia. These countries comprise only 14% of the world’s population but 60% of the Gross World Product and more than 70% of the world’s military expenditures.

NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a Cold War relic once designed to meet alleged “Soviet aggression” in Europe and now reconfigured to provide a veneer of international legitimacy to U.S.-led military attacks, often under the guise of humanitarian action, in countries as divergent and far-flung as Libya, Afghanistan, and the former Yugoslavia. These “interventions” often increase already- existing internal violence, impede the work of relief organizations on the ground, violate international law, and provide cover for enhancing the power and influence of Western states at the expense of the beleaguered inhabitants of the targeted countries. Just a portion of the military spending by NATO could save the lives of thousands of people daily who are in desperate need of food, clean water, shelter, and medical care.

A meeting by either of these two notorious organizations would be reason enough for large protests. How much more so now that, in May, 2012, Chicago will see them both meeting in the same city, at the same time, for the first time in over three decades!

Jan. 25, 2012 at the state capitiol in Madison, WI.

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Milwaukee, Feb. 21: ‘Youth and the Criminal Justice System Teach-In,’ with Rev. Luis Barrios

Posted on February 1, 2012 by wibailoutpeople

http://www.facebook.com/events/262696190466511/

Please join us on Feb. 21st at 6:30 pm at Urban Underground as we welcome the new co-director of Pastors for Peace/IFCO, Rev. Luis Barrios, Ph.D., a professor of Psychology, Criminology, Latin American & Latina/o Studies and Ethnic Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice-City University of New York, and a visiting professor at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. Fr. Barrios is an Associate Priest at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in West Harlem, Manhattan and is a former prisoner of conscience from the School of the America Watch (SOAW) movement.

A native of Puerto Rico, Luis Barros is the author or editor of numerous books in Spanish and English on liberation theology, the impact of US deportations, Gangs in the US, and exploitation at the Haitian/Dominican border, including The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation: Street Politics and the Transformation of a New York City Gang, and Banished to the Homeland: Dominican Deportees and Their Stories of Exile.

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Dr. Barrios will host a candid conversation with youth and discuss issues around violence. This event is free and open to the public with a focus on high school age young people.